


Short Cuts

by Caro_the_Poet



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27839257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caro_the_Poet/pseuds/Caro_the_Poet
Summary: Sam gets a haircut.
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Carter/Jack O'Neill
Comments: 29
Kudos: 72





	Short Cuts

**Author's Note:**

> Season Four, in between "Scorched Earth" and "Beneath the Surface"

“What are we doing today?” Emma, the hairdresser, asks cheerfully. _Too cheerfully_ , Sam thinks. She fingers the ends of her hair, now hanging just past her chin. Past regulation length. She huffs a sigh. 

Ever since the za'tarc incident, she’s felt twitchy and anxious, like she doesn’t belong in her own skin anymore. She and the colonel have barely spoken, and somehow that feels more wrong than the easy laughter and carefree flirting that was definitely breaking the spirit of the frat regs even if they hadn’t broken them _technically_. 

She misses him with an ache that will not be ignored. It follows her to the lab, plagues her through all her experiments and equations; follows her home at night and plagues her sleep. She finds herself having the same dream over and over: the colonel handing Hammond his resignation, right before he takes her face in his hands, his fingers threading through her hair, and kisses her as if he was a dying man getting his last wish granted. It’s so vivid, so real, that every time she wakes up it takes her a good five minutes to realize it isn’t. 

She needs a change; she can’t go on like this much longer. 

And her hairdresser is still waiting for an answer. 

“Just…” Sam gestures vaguely at her too-long locks. “Just chop it off. I don’t even care.” 

Emma squints at her speculatively, and then nods, reaching for the spray bottle. “So, tell me about him,” she says carelessly, focusing on spraying down Sam’s hair and running a comb through it. 

Sam blinks. “What?” 

“Oh, come on. I know a heartbreak-induced haircut when I see one. I’ve been doing this a while.” Emma shrugs and smiles sympathetically. 

Sam chews her bottom lip as Emma begins cutting her hair. Her indecision only lasts a moment. 

“It’s complicated,” she says. 

“Isn’t it always,” Emma responds without making eye contact. “Is he married?” 

“No.” Sam looks down at the floor. 

“Head up, please.” 

“Sorry.” Sam lifts her head and sighs again. “He’s not married. But he might as well be.” 

“Workaholic?” 

Sam laughs bitterly. “Something like that. But so am I, so I can’t hold it against him.” 

Emma doesn’t respond, just squints critically at Sam’s ever-shortening hair. “How are you liking this so far?”

Sam glances disinterestedly at her reflection. “It’s fine.” 

“Cool.” Emma resumes cutting. “So, both workaholics?” 

“Yeah,” says Sam, trying to keep the sadness out of her voice. “We can’t be together because of the work we do.” 

Emma shoots her a look.

“I know how it sounds,” Sam jumps in to explain. “But it’s not an excuse. It’s really the way it is. And we were fine, and we had fun, and it didn’t seem like a big thing; and then something happened one day that made us have to face it, and…” 

What more is there to say? Echoing over and over in her head are the words, _I care about her. A lot more than I’m supposed to_. 

And if that isn’t the understatement of the millennium. A statement that gave them some semblance of plausible deniability, and yet—she can’t forget his eyes when he said those words. His mouth said _I care about her_ ; his eyes said _I love her_. 

“…and I’m trying to forget,” she finishes lamely. 

“That sucks,” says Emma. 

“Yeah,” says Sam. “It’s been rough. We barely talk now and I’ve been awful to my other coworkers lately. I need a change.” 

“Hence the haircut.” 

“Yeah.” 

It sounds stupid to say it out loud. But it _is_ a distraction, and she really has been terrible to Daniel lately. Teal’c has given her a wide berth without asking questions, and she’s been grateful. Daniel, on the other hand, never knows when to shut up and keeps asking her what’s wrong. The last time he pressed her she told him to get the fuck out of her lab, and he hasn’t spoken to her since.  


_God, I’m a terrible person_. She’ll apologize to him the second she gets back to the mountain.

“Hey,” Emma’s voice lowers conspiratorially, “is he hot, at least? If you’re gonna be miserable over him, at _least_ tell me he’s hot.” 

And Sam laughs. She’s beginning to feel a little better. “Yeah. _So_ hot. And funny, too, which shouldn’t be a legal combination.” 

“He sounds dreamy.” 

“He is.” 

Emma grins at her in the mirror, and she grins back. It feels good to have shared even a tiny part of her secret with someone outside of it. 

“All done! What do you think?” Emma spins the chair around and passes Sam a mirror. 

And _wow_. It’s a pixie cut, shorter than she’s ever had it before. She feels lighter than she has in weeks. 

“Thanks; I love it,” she tells Emma. 

As she leaves the hair salon it occurs to her that she just handled heartbreak in the most cliché way she possibly could have. And she knows how the colonel feels about clichés. 

She takes a deep breath and heads to Cheyenne Mountain. 

*

Daniel blinks in surprise when she meets him and Teal’c in one of the long corridors under the mountain. He clears his throat, as if he’s trying to gauge her mood and figure out if he should ask her about her new hairdo or not. “So, how’s…things?” he asks finally.

“Daniel, don’t start,” she says before she can think. She holds up a hand, as if she can force words back in his mouth. 

Daniel looks defeated.

She sucks in a breath. “I’m sorry, Daniel. Especially about what I said yesterday. I’ve been having a…rough couple of weeks. But I’m fine now, I promise. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Daniel replies. He doesn’t look convinced. She shoots a pleading glance at Teal’c, who merely raises an eyebrow at her and says, “I believe Major Carter needed a change. It appears she has found one.” 

To his credit, Daniel doesn’t ask any more questions. He only says, “We’re going to the commissary to grab some food before the briefing. Wanna come?” 

She shakes her head. “No, thanks. I have to stop by my lab first.” 

Daniel and Teal’c walk away, and she continues down the corridor, thinking desperately that she needs to _stop_ thinking about that dream. The dream where he dips her and kisses her until she's dizzy, while General Hammond looks on in shock. The dream she falls asleep thinking about and wakes up never wanting to leave. _Don't think about it, don't think about it_. She rounds the corner to her lab and almost crashes directly into the colonel. 

“Oh! Sorry, sir!” she exclaims, backing up and hoping desperately that she isn’t blushing. 

“Where’s the fire, Carter?” 

“No fires, sir. At least not today.” 

He doesn’t seem to hear; he’s looking at her hair and his eyes are soft and it seems like he’s about to say something when he catches her eye and thinks better of it. They can’t go down this road. This secret is locked up tight, in the room with the za'tarc detector. 

Sam clears her throat, breaking the spell. “I heard we have a new mission, sir?” 

He blinks and comes back to the present. “Yeah. P3R-118. Ice planet. The people appear to live under some kind of dome…thing…that shields them from the cold.” 

Sam shivers automatically. “I hate ice,” she says. 

They share a brief look, both of them thinking of how they almost died in Antarctica. It somehow feels like it was both yesterday, and centuries ago. 

The silence between them becomes awkward, and Sam gestures in the direction of her lab. “Well, I have to…” she doesn’t finish her sentence. 

“Oh. Yeah,” he says, backing away from her. Just as she turns away he says, “Carter?” 

She stops. “Yes, sir?” 

“It’ll get…easier.” 

She huffs a mirthless chuckle and stops just short of rolling her eyes. “Will it?” 

He regards her for a moment. His eyes look almost like they did in the room with the za'tarc detector. _I would rather have died myself than lose you_. 

“We can hope. Someday,” he says finally. 

She shakes her head. “No shortcuts, unfortunately.” 

“No shortcuts.” He looks at the floor. “See you in the briefing room, Carter.” 

“See you, sir.” 

He walks away. 

She enters her lab and sinks down on the stool near her workspace. She hopes he’s right, that it will get easier. At any rate, she doesn’t think it could ever get more difficult than _this_. 

She takes a deep breath and heads to the briefing room. 

P3R-118 awaits.


End file.
